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"New" Words From the Geek Culture
thatskinnyguy sends news of Merriam-Webster's 2008 list of new words and, to no-one's surprise, a good number of them come out of geek culture: words like webinar, malware, netroots, pretexting, and fanboy are now official words according to M-W. The CNet article pulls out one "new" word for special appreciation — mondegreen — and, while the article gets the origin right, it ends with a lame call for readers to send in their favorite mondegreens. (CNet does have the good grace to link the Kiss This Guy site.) SFGate columnist Jon Carroll has been collecting readers' mondegreens since 1995 and his list is bound to be better. Quoting Carroll, in a prophetic mode: "This space has been for some years the chief publicity agent for mondegreens. The Oxford English Dictionary has not yet seen the light, but it will, it will." Would you believe, Merriam-Webster's?
...that I don't know what almost all these words mean? What is a "webinar" for example? I guess I'm just not cool anymore... :|
You spelled "fanboi" wrong.
Sincerely,
AC
Witness the birth of a new geek word on Arstechnica forum:
pludgeverb
1 [ intrans. ] to install an operating system update before verifying that it's safe to do so on the [Ars Mac forum]
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/953002313931
The thread is now the third link on Google if you search for the word.
I realize being a language Nazi is nerdy, even by Slashdot standards, but this summary is just shockingly awful!
The headline reads "\"New\" Words From The Geek Culture". So the summary starts off with a single line on it, then randomly rambles on about CNet focusing on 'mondegreens'. Bzzt! Summary-headline mismatch already! Now it's possible that kdawson is just mimicking TFA, which does the same, but that's a frcikin' blog post! Somehow, a rambling blog post has been distilled into (if it's possible) a fumbly summary as well!
All this meandering is topped off with a quite inexplicable question: "Would you believe, Merriam-Webster's?"
Seriously, WTF?
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What about Google? It has almost replaced 'search this on web' phrase.
To a geek, 'google for SSL' makes sense.
Google's lawyers are hard at work to make sure that their trademark doesn't become a verb and fall to common use status (nullifying the trademark).
I gave up on Webster's as an authoritative source on the English language after they added bling to its dictionary. Noah Webster would be angered by the himbos now in charge of his publication. Perhaps the publishers are just part of the Sandwich generation and spend too much time with their parents while their mouse potato kids edit the dictionary for them.
If Merriam-Webster is going to start adding geek words (though the ones added are of a questionable credibility), I petition that they also add geek words with much more historical and cultural significance.
Yes, it is time a major dictionary added the word 'goatse'. But they should hide it in a tiny locked compartment in the back of the dictionary to seal up the evil it contains. Precautions must be taken to prevent unsuspecting people from accidentally reading words of this much power.
I can finally tell someone their picture should be in the dictionary under fanboy.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
That's because the summary is wrong; "webinar" does not come from the geek world. It comes from the Dilbert world, where marketroids are compelled to make up stupid names for every mildly novel thing. Also, "pretexting" comes from the worlds of crime and espionage. The submitter learned about it in a geeky context (hacking) because the submitter is a geek and learns about most things in a geeky context.
This smacks of the dictionary trying to be overly trendy - I expect a lot of these will be quietly dropped from this dictionary in years to come.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
syn. "use Gentoo Linux"
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Efforting - V - newspeak - The act of an incompetent journalistic organization to appear busy - "We are efforting to bring you more details."
I am hearing this more and more... I say STFU and just say "trying" or "working on" instead of bullshitting us while trying to sound cromulent.
On that note, while they're at it, they ought to add STFU to their little book o' words. It is a perfectly spatulant word and the English-speaking world would be metalopulant to finally instructulate it offically.
FairTax baby!
Yup. If they came from a geek angle they'd have the security definition of "social engineering". Their current entry defines social engineering as either "management of human beings in accordance with their place and function in society" or applied social science.
Although, of course, the latter could be used as a cynical way of describing what social engineering is...
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
now all we need is to add "cromulent" to the dictionary.
Strange thing is the most important NEW word is still not in the m-w...
slashdot
I think it's too late. Already common use and even listed in some dictionaries.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/google
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/google (lists 5 references to google)
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-07-06-new-words_x.htm (google was added two years ago)
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
"The Oxford English Dictionary has not yet seen the light, but it will, it will." Oh but it won't.
- Dan
All Google has to do is show they're trying to supress unauthorized verbing. It's for the best, really.
Verbing weirds nouns.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Yes. By adding a familiarity to the brand name if nothing else.
:x
The Miriam-Webster folks document its first /recorded/ usage as early as 1919. Presumably, it had been in used in spoken form even earlier. So this is a case of the IT crowd adopting pre-existing slang rather than IT speak making its way out into the general culture.
I gleaned this from the AP article. The interesting thing to me is how old some of these new words are, like usage of wing nut to describe a radical out in the far wing of a political party dates back to 1900.
At my last job everyone used the term webinar. Just because you have a unique experience doesn't mean everyone else has the same experience...
Actually, if you have a unique experience, that specifically means that no one else has had that experience. I learned that at a recent company 'blogginar'.
I've always understood the word malware to encompass actively malicious software. Bloat is annoying, a keylogger is malicious.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I recall reading a Jon Carrol column in the SF Chronicle about mondegreens in about 1986. IT was at the least no later than 1987. And now that I look in Wikipedia, the word was coined in 1954:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen
Some people just take a very long time to catch up with the cool kids :)